Preface / Acknowledgements

This report highlights the current state of subregional cooperation and key agenda that will help accelerate the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals in East and North-East Asia. Despite the subregion’s economic dynamism, and many countries in the subregion leading the world in frontier technologies, the subregion has been lagging in making progress on many of the Sustainable Development Goals. Common challenges in the subregion exist in all dimensions of sustainable development including air and marine pollution, increased exposure to natural disasters in connection to climate change, rapid population ageing, and growing inequality, just to name some of the most pressing issues.